Road Classification and Assessment

The Department of Parks and Wildlife (DPaW) requires a suitably skilled and experienced service provider to conduct field surveys to inventory and make assessments on its sealed and unsealed roads and associated infrastructure throughout the various DPaW regions of Western Australia.

A strategy adopted by the department to ensure the safety of the road user is preserved and underpinning the functionality of a road asset management system, is` to undertake regular inspections and assessments of roads and associated infrastructure to ensure that the Department is informed and can plan for the maintenance and replacement liabilities.

Responding to the 2001 High Court decision to abolish the non-feasance rule that protected road managers from litigation, DPaW, formally the Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) launched an initiative to identify all strategic roads that are important for access and management. A comprehensive field assessment was then initiated to inventory and rate the condition of the strategic road assets, together with the identification of any road hazards. This extensive exercise of inventorying and assessing 36,915km of roads and tracks was completed in 2008 using a component of the local government’s ‘ROMAN’ road management system as a standard for capturing the road information. DPaW has a software application, hereafter referred to as the ‘Pick-Up Program’, which was developed to capture all relevant road data specific for this purpose.

Over time, the network of strategic roads will change both in importance and condition, so a road management objective aims to have all high value/high risk roads re-surveyed approximately every five years together with any new roads that have been identified. The objective of this contract is to continue with the survey and assessment of the DPaW’s strategic road network.

Project Scope

A number of DPaW region’s strategic networks require re-assessment of which, dependant on available funding, DPaW aim to have these completed over the next two to three financial years. Stage 1 will involve the capture of the Swan and South Coast regions, followed by Stage 2 capturing roads throughout the other nominated regions. Refer to Table 1 below for details.

The options to extend this contract may be exercised in the circumstances where further time may be required to complete this work, or survey newly constructed roads or roads that, through review have become strategic. All survey work additional to Stage 1 and 2 will be subject to the same pricing submitted under Schedule 3.